About NIARR

photo of Palouse in eastern Washington state

Network for Integrated Agricultural Resilience Research (NIARR)

A ‘network of networks’ committed to collaborative partnerships with agricultural networks across North America

Our Mission

Resilient Agricultural Systems are Fundamental for Global Food Security & Social Stability

Resilient agricultural systems are those that can continue to provide food, livelihood security, and important ecosystem services in the face of climate, economic, and other global changes currently threatening agricultural systems. Modern agricultural systems are vulnerable to shifts that may lead to system collapse and reorganization around different processes, structures, and functions that are less desirable for food production and for humanity and have the potential to destabilize food security and societies.

Specific aspects of modern intensive agriculture have been shown to be fundamentally unsustainable. However, we need a better understanding of how modern agricultural practices and policies increase the risk of regime shifts in key dimensions of agricultural systems.

Resilience science, which focuses on threshold behavior and vulnerability to regime shifts at multiple spatial and temporal scales, is well suited for addressing these critical gaps in knowledge. There is currently no single institution or network that is fully capable of addressing this challenge, as the needed data and expertise are distributed across multiple entities.​

Our Networks

cattle-grazing
LTAR logo

The USDA-ARS Long-term Agroecosystem Research Network focuses on sustainable intensification and profitability of agroecosystems.

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photo of lake and fog
CALL-net logo

The Canadian Agroecosystems Living Labs Network (CALL-Net) is a national network of agricultural sites focused on developing innovative on-farm practices to tackle climate change.

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photo taken from kayak on water
Resnet logo

ResNet is focused on broad questions of resilience, scale, and ecosystem services in multiple working landscapes of Canada.

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lake photo
Resilience Alliance logo

The Resilience Alliance is an international resilience network which has been the core developer of resilience theory and its application to real socio-ecological systems.

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nsf logo

Funding

This project is funded by a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network grant from the Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) directorate, and a University of Nebraska Collaboration Initiative Seed Grant.